Camera and the industry standard. [Field of View]

First things first, this is a personal observation. I'm not really interested in camera mobility. There's little to no merit in having a rotating camera in a game like PoE. However, field of view is a completely different subject, at least to me.

The single biggest complaint heard about this game on this forum, other forums and game channels is the smothering camera. "Repelling", "claustrophobic", "cramped", "encroaching", "stuffy", "immersion breaking", "game breaking"... All of these phrases can be found on this forum. And I have to agree with the sentiment.

ARPG's have an industry standard when discussing camera distance. The creators of PoE seem to think that ignoring that is somehow beneficial to their playerbase. It's not.

Here's a comparison, I overlaid a PoE screenshot onto 5 different screenshots from other ARPGs as a visual illustration. The other games were very similar so I went with the smallest common denominator and PoE is still significantly smaller than the next smallest in regards to max camera zoom. I used the red arrow to grab the framed character to make sure I had relative point of reference.



The red area is the difference.

As you can see, there's a marginal difference. PoE's field of view is nearly 20% smaller than the next smallest competitor. That's just not acceptable from a gameplay standpoint and for those that haven't been turned off already, there will be plenty that don't invest in this game for this one simple reason.

The gamespace is cramped and no one really likes that. Even those who say "You'll get used to it..." would rather have a larger field of view.

Speaking personally, I find the camera max zoom to be constrictive and it makes me want to not support, play or buy tokens for this game.

I want to see this game succeed, and one way to help is to increase the field of view.

It's not a matter of zoom, it's always been a matter of angle.
The angle is PoE is steeper than D2, D3, and Titan Quest, so you see less of the things at the top of your screen and only slightly more at the bottom.

I don't get people who comaplin about the zoom distance. We see a lot of stuff on screen at once and GGG has explained thoroughly they cannot increase it further without a lot of consequences (increased draw distance for engine, load distance for assets, information server has to send to clients, and attack range of some spells/attacks).

The angle might be the issue. Perhaps allowing a little bit of camera angle ajudgment would clear up the perception that the distance is too close?

I guess I'm having trouble even picturing how "further back" these people want it. This isn't an RTS. Even if it was, look at WC3! You're like so close up you can see a unit's zit on their face.

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anubite wrote:

The angle might be the issue. Perhaps allowing a little bit of camera angle ajudgment would clear up the perception that the distance is too close?

You can do this somewhat already by using the 'zoom in' feature currently in the game (read: bringing the angle down closer to level). Of course you lose zoom doing it. :P

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MaxTheLimit wrote:

The OP didn't really mention the angle of the camera, just the camera distance. The angle of the camera is a totally different issue ( though probably more what people ACTUALLY are noticing ). But because the zoom distance is the only thing he/she mentioned it is the only information I responded to...

Your comparison was excellent, I didn't mean to diminish it.

I prefer PoE camera angle where you actually have good view of the surroundings to lets say D3 where you can see a lot in the top left corner but can't see shit in the lower part of the screen.

Didn't they just shrink the character size at one point? Yeah, funny question, but I really thought they did it at one point. I think the camera is not a standalone issue, many things happen outside of the screen, AI tweaks and attack range adjustments could help with this.

Even with the zoom outs, this game still feels very claustrophobic. (In a bad way, not a good way that youd see in something like silent hill 2 or dark souls)

It also has a lot to do with opaque walls and the fact that enemies can be a bit camouflaged (looking at you Vaal Snakes).